Seldom have I seen so great a change in any man. He seemed to have shrunk a full six inches and to have aged three times faster than the calendar would have conceded. His skin, too, had taken on an ashen, sickly hue.

I hid the shock I felt as best I could, allowed him to hang up my coat and followed him to a roaring fire which did much to dispel the chill from my bones and the oppressive gloom of the rather drably furnished room. The thin film of dust on the less accessible surfaces showed that much in the way of housekeeping was either beyond him or no longer of consequence.

The room served as both dining-room and drawing-room for a table was already laid out for supper. After a few minutes of rather stilted conversation, during which I extended my condolences for his wife's death, he excused himself and disappeared briefly, returning with two bowls of steaming hot soup.

On that chill night the soup was doubly welcome and served to melt the barrier that had formed between us after so long a separation. Over the cold meats that followed, and the apple pie, the clock turned back and we were once again the close friends that we had been in the years gone by.

A decanter of port had been standing on a side table. Hugo unstoppered it and passed it to me saying I have not lost my taste for this, you see, nor for a good cigar to accompany it!

'Now tell me, Charles, you must, from time to time, have pondered the mystery of death. We all of us do as the years weigh more heavily upon us. What do you think happens to us after death? To the essential "us", to the Ra of the ancient Egyptians, to the soul, if you prefer to call it that?'

'Well, that's quite a question to throw at me out of the blue.

I suppose that, basically, it seems both wrong and illogical that we should each exist for a mere drop in the ocean of time and then, suddenly, cease to exist, completely, utterly and for ever.